As issues concerning feminism become increasingly popular and hotly debated, a faction of its opponents attempt to match that growth and diminish feminism’s lasting effect. The men’s rights movement — or meninists, as they so cutely call themselves — represents the loudest organized voices against feminism, bemoaning a neglect of men they believe remains unaddressed. At best, this movement is a redundant protest of issues that feminism already seeks to address. At worst, meninists are making a misogynistic mockery of true activism and misguidedly placing blame.
Mother Jones recently published a thorough examination of the men’s rights movement from the perspective of its credited creator, Warren Farrell. Farrell manages to stand out from his angry and bitter brethren with a calm rationale that is, admittedly, appealing. He responded to the Mother Jones’ piece with a brief list of concerns that the article “completely ignored,” according to Farrell. He cites in his list of grievances the need for a “Men’s Studies” department at universities.
I couldn’t help my bewilderment as I stared at that particular bullet point. How could he not realize the essence of human history was “Men’s Studies”? Upon further examination of these claims, I found that some were legitimate concerns — concerns that feminism has been seeking to fix all along. Issues such as unreported sexual assault against men, domestic violence against men and the societal expectation of the male breadwinner are all perfectly valid complaints.
What men’s rights activists fail to realize is these woes are not the fault of feminism but of the patriarchal society that feminism consistently seeks to dismantle. I find it endlessly amusing that men can take an issue such as a male-only draft law and interpret it as men’s lives being disposable, when in actuality, laws that exclude women are — shocker! — not about men but about fundamental flaws women are believed to possess, like weakness and fragility. Meninists have the unique ability to twist issues of female marginalization into some alleged injustice against men.
This pseudo-movement is teeming with contradiction and inconsistency. In claiming to protest gender discrimination against men — whose “discrimination” cannot hold a candle to the historical injustices women have faced — they tend toward aggressive and hateful language regarding women on forums, perpetuating that which they claim to protest.
Meninists seek to uplift and improve the lives of men at the expense of the feminist equality that attempts to do the same for women. Here lies the most problematic aspect of men’s rights ideology: They cannot conceive true equality, only an existing power dynamic that places one gender in charge of the other. In the eyes of Farrell and his supporters, feminism is not about equality, but rather about power. Female progress is a direct threat to male superiority, and as more women achieve success and status, they come closer to dominating spheres that men have controlled for millennia. And meninists will be damned before women have that kind of influence.
Despite this fear of female power, these men are unhappy with masculine gender roles and societal expectations that force them to be breadwinners, soldiers and absent fathers. They neglect to mention that these issues fall under the feminist umbrella of “toxic masculinity.”
To meninists, societal expectations are separate from and caused by feminism, when in reality they are directly linked. Constricting male gender roles which pressure men to act “like a man” are a direct result of the devaluation of femininity. If it were not so abhorrent to be “like a woman,” then men would be free from the expectations that force them to constantly prove their masculinity through wealth, war, violence and stoicism.
The men’s rights movement wholly appears as an impermanent fad and a desperate cry for attention as women’s issues are addressed even passingly; a plea for relevancy. For once in our history, everything is not centered on the archetypal straight white man, and issues of diversity and discrimination are progressively discussed.
Meninism is a juvenile and ignorant desire for oppression, and a fabrication of issues to serve as its justification. Threatened by conversations of female empowerment, meninists interject and interrupt with tired slogans of “not all men,” and “men suffer too,” not realizing how petulant and entitled they appear. When marginalized groups create conversations or spaces of sanctuary, meninists feel obligated to include themselves in an attempt to diminish the suffering of women or prove their suffering is somehow more worthy of discussion.
This tendency to assert themselves as the most important part of a gender dialogue only further invalidates the legitimacy of men’s rights activists. True to form, they do not contribute to progress but wholly derail enlightened conversations about gender equality.
Amy Coker is a UF English junior. Her column appears on Wednesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 2/4/2015 under the headline “Meninism: a movement of misogyny and contradiction that sets back women’s rights"]
